Young Syrian refugees walk at a camp in Anbar province west of Baghdad, Iraq, 19 Aug. Most Syrian refugees have no extended family in the countries to which they are fleeing. (Photo: CNS/Ali al-Mashhadani, Reuters)

24 Aug 2012  By Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) — While media images of
the Syrian civil war are mainly those of men with guns,
workers from Catholic Relief Services have seen
“predominantly women and children, fleeing,” said a
communications officer who recently returned from the
Middle East.

Syrian women, hailing from a society that gives
them little chance to make their voices heard, were
“tugging on my sleeve, begging me to tell their stories” in
the United States, said the manager, Caroline Brennan,
who visited with the refugees in Lebanon and Jordan.

The 250,000 Syrian refugees, part of a larger
group of 1.5 million Syrians displaced from their homes
due to the fierce fighting enveloping their country, have
been “blindsided by what is happening to them,” she said
in a webcast Aug. 22.

These Syrians were “viewing (the war) from a
distance, never thinking this would affect their lives,”
Brennan said. “Many of these people, literally fleeing for
their lives, are middle class. They have nice homes. The
country has no debt. They never expected to see this
happening.”

Brennan told of a pregnant Syrian refugee who
got a job as a maid in exchange for shelter for her and her
sons. She worked until she gave birth and went back to
work again shortly thereafter.

“She had no way to see a doctor or pediatrician
until CRS stepped in,” she said. “Many of these women
have bullet wounds. Their children need care.”

“One woman I met in Jordan ... she was with her
mother and they heard gunshots and they scurried around
a corner. And the woman saw her mother, lying next to
her, on the ground,” felled by a bullet.

“Families are trying desperately to stay together,”
but not always succeeding, Brennan added. Sometimes,
men “stay home trying to protect their land, or they’re
fighting — or worse, they’ve been kidnapped. The women
are left to lead the family. They think: What is happening
to the people they love in this world?”

But she also told of a Syrian husband and father
named Faizad.

“He came across the border, but his wife and
(most of their) children weren’t allowed to make it. But
then he has a son he has to care for. He (the son) cries at
night, he misses his mom,” Brennan said. Workers can tell
from the boy’s drawings that he has seen “people with
guns killing innocent people,” she added.

“This is a humanitarian crisis at its heart,” she
said.

There are “huge social needs of the people,
especially children and mothers,” said Vivian Manneh, a
20-year CRS veteran currently serving as a regional
program manager for the Middle East. “Kids are starting
to think, ‘What is going to happen to us? Where are we
going to be?’ There are lots of psychosocial needs, lots of
basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter.”